NCAA 2nd round: non-Hoya Games Discussion

[DanMcQ]

..

[VictorSkyPage]

Let's go Mountaineers...

keep holding it down for the Big EAST

[HooHoya]

Not looking good for the Mountaineers early on. Duke looks focused.

Lots of game left, though. I hate cheering for Bob Thuggins, but Coach K looks like a ferret and the refs always cheat for him:

[royski]

What people don't realize about the Big East is that its a league with at least 11 really quality teams. That means, home and away, and including the BET, every Big East team has just played 12-17 really high level games in conference. When you take the top half of a conference like that and put it against these other teams that aren't nearly as tried and tested, you understand how 7-1 happens. (With the 1 due to injury.)

[Boz]

Here come the 'Neers!!

I can't believe i am rooting for Bob Huggins. I need a shower.

[ichirohoya]

In this game, Huggins is what we might call the lesser of two evils.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Its nice that the refs decided to take over this WVU-Duke game - I didn't want it to be determined by the skills of the players involved or anything.

ON EDIT: Now Duke is getting some fouls called on them - that's better.

[jerseyhoya34]

What's surprising to me is that they are not beating them with inside play but from the outside in.

This Duke team is underperforming significantly this season. Almost to a person, their players have underperformed expectations for the season and their careers.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Nice dirty play by Duke throwing a shoulder into a player and trying to make it look like a screen.

[1984alloveragain]

NICE!! Our SEVENTH team is BEATING their SECOND Place team!! Remember the bad ole' days when Duke liked to come to play at the Booth? Then came 1/21/06...

[ichirohoya]

Goodbye Duke.

I hope Coach K enjoys seeing Verizon Center in his nightmares for the next few years!

[austintex]

Let's hope WVU has learned how to hit free throws in the clutch.

[MCIGuy]

Well, to be honest how many times did Duke actually play in The Booth before 1-21-06?

Anyway is UNC just as fradulent a #1 seed as Memphis? Because obviously neither played anyone during their conference schedule.

[DanMcQ]

Down goes Duke.

Kryptonite Kourt does K's boys in yet again.

[1984alloveragain]

MCI, I'm sure they beat us there a few times before that date, and they won all their tournament games there (at least two and maybe four over two different years). I remember a stat during our game with them that showed their undefeated record there and Packer mentioning how K must like coming to the Booth...

[HoyaFanNY]

god i love it when they lose. if belmont didn't self destruct down the stretch it would have happened thursday. maybe coach k(rybaby) can recruit a 5 star athletic big man for next year to go with his group of midgets. oh wait, he did and he chose georgetown instead.

[SirSaxa]

Congratulations to WVU!
They are a 7th seed, but they finished 5th in our conference.
Knocking off Duke for the BE -- heck, for the country. Nice Job.
And a HUGE congratulations to NOVA for last night's big win over Clemson.
Gotta love all this talk about BE teams doing well because their conference is so tough!
And HOYAS won Conf. title 2 years running.

A great tourney so far!

[Hoya50]

BIG EAST! BIG EAST!

i loved it when alexander blocked singler and nelson and starting talking s*** to them. i will never root against that kid, save when wvu plays the hoyas.

[DFW HOYA]

In one sense, Duke is going through the life cycle that affected the elder Thompson era--recruiting no longer matches expectations, and it is exposed in games like this.

Where once Duke had the the builders (Bilas, Dawkins, Alarie) the stars (Hill, Laettner, Hurley), and the second wind (Brand, Battier, Williams), today's team is a lot of guards that just throw up bad shots. When your best inside players are Lance Thomas and Brian Zoubek, you wonder where the recruiting went.

Duke 2008 has become Georgetown circa 1997, a team where the light of its tradition first began to outshine its accomplishments on the court.

[jerseyhoya34]

I am surprised by how well the BE has done because I thought the quality of play went down this year as compared to last in our league, but maybe this first round tells us that the quality of play nationally dropped more.

Looking at the BE tourney teams, I would argue that the following teams played better basketball over the course of the season than they did last year: ND, UCONN, MU, and WVU. I don't think the differences were that great except in UCONN's case. I don't think our level of play has been nearly as high as it was last season down the stretch, although we're still very good.

These wins also mean that the BE will be getting a good pot of money out of the tournament.